Op Ed

The Tech Report - Modern shooters and the atrophy of fun.Since the days of Doom and Quake, we've seen shooters take quantum leaps
in graphics, writing, voice acting, and just about everything else—except
for gameplay. Somehow, gameplay hasn't evolved. It hasn't gotten more fun or
more engaging or more interesting. Instead, it's atrophied into a bland rut,
to the point where big-budget shooters feel just like old light-gun arcade
games (Virtua Cop, House of the Dead, and so on). Players are still stuck on
rails, still made to gun down easy target after easy target, pausing only to
reload and to watch cut scenes. Today's visuals and stories might be
Oscar-worthy, but the interactivity still feels like tasteless filler.

Shooters could be so much more. Instead of trivializing combat, they could
make fights less frequent, longer, and more memorable. They could reward
players for acting rationally when outnumbered—hide, flee, or die. Shooters
could, when appropriate, encourage problem-solving and exploration over
brute force. Hell, why couldn't they have players decide how the story plays
out? But no, that's all too much to ask. Studios and publishers seem to have
forgotten that games are supposed to be games, not CG films with playable
action scenes.